The Dragon Sleeps
by T3h Toby-Chan
Summary: Caught in bad weather, Hitomi does some thinking about her relationship with Van.


(((**********The Dragon Sleeps**********)))  
  
By Toby-Chan  
  
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"In the darkness, the dragon waits.  
  
To a heart numbed with cold, the dragon roars.  
  
With you by my side, the dragon sleeps,  
  
When the dragon gains wings,  
  
Into the sky  
  
Our hopes will leap."  
  
-Draconian song  
  
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The wind whipped and flung the pouring rain into diagonal sheets, as Van piloted Escaflowne through the gray sky, his shirt making only a red spot on the dragon's back. The drops stung his eyes and made his face raw, making him swerve a bit off course.  
While the freezing water assaulted his arms and made goosebumps rise, the girl behind him, although cold and soaked, didn't make a sound of protest. She merely locked her arms around his waist, holding on for dear life, and praying that he wasn't driving on out of anger.  
'Please don't be mad, Van,' Hitomi shut her eyes tightly. It was far too loud to try to ask him if he was alright, and his stony expression made him completely unreadable. She knew something had been wrong with him. Ever since he saw her on the bridge with Allen, he had been so reserved, and after a while, he seemed angry... angry at her.  
She clasped her cold fingers together, and breathed a frosty puff that didn't linger in the sweeping air.  
Van gripped the control cables of his guymelef, and tried to put his strength into turning against the wind. He felt Hitomi's arms tighten with fear. His memory drifted to the moment they'd spent together in the hangar together.  
'I want you-... to stay with me.' He had said, bent over trying to keep Escaflowne's sword sharpened. It had taken him so long to say that, and then he fumbled to continue, 'I want... your power. The power of Atlantis!'  
He really hadn't meant to say that. He hadn't meant to send Hitomi running off angrily. He hadn't meant for a lot of things to happen.  
'Baka,' he said to himself quietly, 'You always ruin it.'  
Now, there they were, driving on silently through a rainstorm, large amounts of unspoken feelings between them; feelings that would hardly get through, with their static communication.  
Plink!  
Van jerked his head to the side to where the small chunk had hit the metal armor.  
Plink... plink, plink plink!  
The sky was raining hail stones, making a tatu of hollow pings against the side of the guymelef, and small red marks on the skin of it's passengers.  
"Van!" Hitomi yelled, close to his ear, so she could be heard above the wind and hail stones, "Van- itai!-" She was hit in the arm with an ice chunk midsentence, "Come on, we have to land somewhere."  
She wasn't sure, but he seemed to let out a short "Hn," before pulling the right cable and descending the dragon.  
It landed powerfully, as Van maneuvered it within the hollowed out roof of a cliff. Quickly checking for errors, he walked back to Hitomi and averted his eyes before speaking to her.  
"I... think we can wait it out in here." He said, hastily.  
Hitomi looked up and around the rocky walls, and sparse area. This was definitely a good place for Escaflowne to be kept, but not for humans.  
She peered at Van who had gone to his own dark corner, apparently as far away from her as he could be, and then looked out over the dim horizon. There was really nothing to see besides hills and rain.  
A lightning flash illuminated the profile of a distant hill for a split second, and her eyes lit up.  
"Hey, Van!" She said excitedly, grabbing his wrist and pointing over to the hill top. The lightning flashed again, and showed the small building's sillhouette.  
"So?" He shrugged, turning back towards the dragon.  
"So... we can stay in there. It will be warmer." Hitomi suggested.  
"It's too far." He argued, folding his arms.  
"It'll only take a few minutes. Ten minutes tops! Please. We have nothing in here!" Hitomi looked up at him begging by way of her watery green eyes.  
He took a moment's breath, slid his sheath into his belt and said, "Fine. Only until the weather gets better."  
So they headed out.  
Slowly but surely, the two traveled over the sloping muddy ground, occasionally slipping. When Hitomi had fallen once, she expected that Van would have come to help her up, but he just kept moving on, not giving a care either way.  
It wasn't two minutes into their walk, that the hail let up, only to be replaced by a wet snow. The wind was unbearable against their soaked skin, but neither showed signs of being affected by it.  
Van walked on a few paces ahead of Hitomi, cursing to himself, not about the weather, but still dwelling on his previous thoughts about the girl from the Mystic Moon.  
'It was my fault.' He thought angrily, 'And she went off with Allen the minute I slipped up. That stupid girl. Why do I bother?' His fists cleched tightly as he concentrated on more ways to blame Hitomi for all his downfalls.  
'If she would only share with me her power... this would all be better!'  
Hitomi, trying desperately to get rid of any bad blood between them, tried to run to keep up with Van. She stepped on her shoelace, and slipped on a patch of slush, falling on Van's shoulders. He was in the middle of a nasty thought at the moment, and impulsively swung his arm out to shake her off.  
"Get the hell off me!" He yelled, scowling, and tramping over the freezing ground.  
A hot tear spilled from Hitomi's eye and down her cheek, as her skin tingled with numbness from the cold snow.  
"Fine! If he wants to be that way." Hitomi grumbled slowly, Stomping ahead of him. "If that's how he's going to be, then he can go alone." The snow was gathering to nearly an inch on the ground, and caking around her shoes.  
Proudly keeping her eyes closed and ignoring the pain of the cold, she moved onward toward the growing destination.  
As some time passed, she paused and opened her eyes, to realize that Van wasn't behind her anymore. Come to think of it, she had stopped hearing his footsteps a while back.  
"Van?" She yelled, into the white swirl that had grown into the air. The snowy carpet was now reaching her ankles. "VAN!" She screamed louder.  
She frantically trudged back in the direction of her footprints, which were becoming blown over by the second.  
"Van!" She yelled, seeing a contour in the snow, and a patch of black hair. Van was lying on his front, unconsious in the snow.  
"Kami Sama! Van!" She turned him over, and looked at his paling face, and purple lips. "I hope I can do this. Hold on, Van!" She heaved him onto her shoulder, letting his legs dangle and drag behind.  
The boy was a lot heavier than she would have expected from his small skinny frame. His stiff arms swung loosely at her side, almost lifeless.  
"Hold on Van. Just a few more seconds," She said, dragging him up the final hill and to the wooden shack.  
"Please let the door be unlocked," she hoped, as she pushed on the creaky board. It slowly opened, and she sighed relief, dragging Van inside.  
"Hello?" She called into the dark. No answer. The rafters creaked, and her eyes took a moment to adjust to the light. She made out the stables, and the rickety chairs, and the bales of hay. The horses were gone, but she could tell that somebody had at least used this stable recently. She set Van against the bale of fresh hay, and ran her hands along the shelves and window sill, before she finally got a little blessing.  
She picked up the oil lamp, and beside it, a steel file and flint rock. After a few fumbles with her numb fingers, she lit the wick, and set the lamp on the floor.  
Then with the feeble light, she found her second blessing; a folded wool blanket, on the shelf above the wooden chair in the corner. It was probably what the stable hands used when they were working late and needed to doze off out with the horses.  
Quickly grabbing the lamp and blanket, she kneeled besides where she had Van propped up against the bale.  
Her fingers strayed over his mouth, where she thankfully felt a shallow breath still coming, but his lips were deathly cold, just as the rest of his skin.  
Remembering what she'd learned in health class about hypothermia, and treating victims, it didn't take her long to see what she had to do.  
With gentle care, she helped him out of his sopping wet red shirt, and wrung it out, hanging it on a nearby rafter. She managed to get off his gloves, and boots in a quick manor. She left him down to his shorts, and covered him with the blanket to remove her own wet clothes.  
'This is just for survival,' She reminded herself, 'You have to keep him warm.'  
She got off her wet socks, shoes, her school uniform, and used the end of the blanket to dry herself off.  
As she climbed beneath the blanket, she touched the end of Van's jet black hair, where it was frozen stiff.  
"Please, God," She prayed, "Let him live."  
With that, the images grew fuzzy, and she dozed off into blackness, embracing Van's cold body to her own.  
Just before drifting into sleep, she looked up at Van's expressionless face and wondered quietly to herself,  
"Is this the closest I'll ever be to knowing more about him?"  
  
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Van woke with a start to the sound of thunder, and the still air surrounding him. The last thing he remembered feeling was being cold... and being alone. Now he was curled beneath a warm blanket beside somebody's sleeping figure. Too sore to move, he lay still and looked down upon Hitomi's tranquil face.  
Sensing Van awakening, Hitomi sleepily opened her eyes.  
'I must have fallen asleep.' She thought to herself, shifting, and scooting away from Van.  
"Hito-" He began, but she interupted him.  
"Turn around." She instructed.  
"Huh?"  
"Turn around and close your eyes." She said, which Van obediently did. She got up, checking behind her quickly, and knelt beside her knapsack to get out the one dry shirt inside it.  
"Good thing I brought this," She said, pulling the long hand-stitched nightshirt over her head.  
"Alright." She said, smoothing out her hair as if nothing had happened.  
"H- Hitomi?"  
"Nani?" She asked, kneeling back baside Van.  
"What happened?"  
The small flame from the oil lamp flickered low, casting shadows that danced upon the walls. Hitomi avoided the question and got up to check on the drying clothes.  
"Still damp," She said, disappointedly, turning over her wet shirt on the wooden post. Van found his strength and sat up, trying to look Hitomi in the eye, which she kept avoiding cleverly.  
"Hitomi..." He inquired again.  
"It was cold," She said, adjusting the wick on the lamp, "Your clothes were wet and you needed heat."  
There was a thick silence in the air.  
"Thank you." He said finally, into the open space.  
Hitomi only nodded, and drew her knees up to her chest, gazing out the window. She shivered a bit, and lay her head against the wall, trying to sleep somehow.  
The dull night sky provided no anwsers or solace for her, but still, she gazed gloomily with her huge green eyes producing a blank stare.  
'I'll never be closer to Van, will I?' the thought brought a tear to her eye, as she hugged her knees a little closer, trying to brace against the cold air.  
"Aren't you cold too?" Van's voice broke the silence.  
She only looked slowly back at him with a questioning look on her face.  
"I mean, it's not really fair that only one of us gets the blanket."  
Her heart raced for a second, and she edged over to Van.  
"So you're not... mad?" She asked.  
"Why would I be mad?" Van turned over, a small frown of question creasing over his face.  
Her thoughts drifted back to all the things that happened. Their moment in the hangar, she and Allen on the bridge together, their fight out in the snow. She didn't answer, just let the akward pause commence.  
"Well, you shouldn't catch cold or anything like that," He tried to say casually.  
She smiled weakly, and slid beneath the blanket, nestling up to the warm spot beside Van. She breathed in his scent. He didn't smell like Amano, the way Allen did, but it was comforting to know he was there.  
She thought about Allen again.  
//"When I'm with you, I feel at peace,"// He had told her.  
"I'm sorry," She said, unaware she was even speaking.  
"Sorry?" Van repeated, "Sorry for what?"  
"For hurting you," She lowered her head ashamedly.  
Van set his hand beneath her chin and cupped it gently, bringing her eyes to meet his.  
"If you love Allen-..." He trailed off. He wasn't sure where to continue, and she wasn't sure where to begin. Her fingers unconsiously strayed to her lips, where Allen had given her her first kiss.  
"I wanted that to happen for so long," She muttered, slowly peeling away at what she truly felt, "I was sure that Allen was the one. I knew that I wanted for him to be my first kiss."  
The raven haired boy beside her nodded slowly.  
"Then, then it happened. You saw it, and-... it wasn't all I wished it to be."  
Van's attention was sparked at her comment.  
"Now I wish I could take it back. But there are things you can't take back. Like that..."  
She lay on her back, watching the rafters and thinking about what to say.  
"What's it like?" He asked, innocently as though he were her little brother.  
"What? Kissing? You mean to tell me the king of Fanelia has never kissed anyone?" She chuckled in mild amusement.  
"Don't make fun," He pouted.  
"Well what do you want me to tell you?"  
"I don't know. Forget I ever said it." He rolled to his side.  
"Van," she reached over and clasped his hand. He drew in a breath and turned back once again.  
"What?" he asked, a little more weakly.  
"Do you want a first kiss?" Both of them were shocked by Hitomi's words, but she stayed firm, still holding Van's hand.  
He gave only the slightest hint of a nod, and a lopsided smirk. She leaned in closer to his face, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and shared with him a chaste kiss.  
When she pulled back, he still had his eyes closed, shocked in the moment.  
She lay her head back down feeling warm again, even with the cold room. The creaks of the aging wood planks and the patter of the weather that had returned to rain sounded through the small room, but she found herself nodding into a sound sleep.  
Just before her eyes closed, she felt Van's gentle hug around her, and heard a small whisper in her ear.  
"I love you, Hitomi... Thank you."  
  
****Fin****  
  
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***Japanese to know*** Considering how much Japanese I usually put in fics, there isn't alot in here.  
  
Baka: I think we all know 'baka', right? If you don't, it means, 'idiot', or 'stupid'  
  
Itai: Ouch!  
  
Kami-Sama: Sort of like 'Oh my God,"  
  
Nani: 'What?'  
  
A/N: I was thinking about writing a blanket scenario fic for Van and Hitomi, but it took me a while to get it done. I wanted to have one that was more than just an excuse for the couple to get naked together. The title took a long time to find, but I saw that it fit pretty well, so I used the quote from the movie. I also thought it would be refreshing to have a blanket scenario where the girl was the rescuer.  
  
I'm not sure if that was too short. I thought it might have turned out a bit rushed. I may do a re-write of it or something. You can tell me if it sucked, alright?  
  
Thank you for reading. This is a one-shot, remember that, so I won't be adding new chapters. Since it is a one-shot this is your only chance to review, so please do. I'd be ever so grateful.  
  
Ciao. 


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